Animas Valley Institute -  Guiding the Descent to Soul Since 1980

Waking Up, and Co-creating 
Life-Enhancing Society

This Musing is one of eight adapted from Bill's talk to the International Coaches Federation at their August 2008 Montreal conference. 

Artwork: Doug Van Houten 
 
Part 8
Confirmation and the New Voice You Slowly Recognize as Your Own
 
This is the last part of an eight-part Musing (one per week).
With the last four Musings, we began a brief tour of the first four of eight stages of eco-soulcentric human development, and we explored the two stages of childhood, the stage of early adolescence, and the passage (Confirmation) into late adolescence. In this Musing, we consider the Cocoon, the stage of psychological late adolescence.

Friday, July 28, 2017
 
You all know about cocoons. To the caterpillar, the cocoon is a tomb. But it's actually a tomb-womb. To the caterpillar, it's only a tomb. This is a place to die. Does the caterpillar know that there is some possibility for life after being a caterpillar? We don't know, but we imagine not. For us humans, we don't know what's possible for us. We've heard stories, and yet we really don't know, individually, for us personally, what the possibility might be. In the cocoon, the caterpillar body liquefies. It becomes caterpillar soup. It's just soup. But there are these special cells that have been in the caterpillar all along that are in the soup, too. These cells biologists call " imaginal cells." What a fabulous name!
Imaginal cells. They call them that because the adult form of that critter is a butterfly, and biologists call the butterfly "the imago." The butterfly is the adult phase of that creature's life cycle.

So, in the caterpillar all along, there were these imaginal cells. And what they are imagining is flight, something the caterpillar was never conscious of as a possibility. What happens in the cocoon is this: These imaginal cells are like contractors, and they get all the cells rearranged into the configuration of a butterfly. And then, when the butterfly is formed well enough, the cocoon opens, and out flies the adult form.

This is essentially what happens for us in the 4th stage of life, the Cocoon stage. And it's a very subversive thing to mainstream, Western, popular culture. If enough people become "butterflies," mainstream culture would quickly collapse, which is happening now anyways but too slowly. But the fact that Western culture is collapsing doesn't mean we don't need to go through the Cocoon, developmentally. The early 21st-century is a particularly great opportunity to do this ourselves and help others do this.

So the initiators and the true elders who are meeting those people of whatever age at the Confirmation threshold, say, "Congratulations! You are leaving your adolescent home of personality, and you are never going back." In most cultures the person is then removed from everyday cultural routines -- at least for the time being.

Australian aboriginals are sent on a Walkabout at this time. The Basque people, according to anthropologist Angeles Arrien, are also sent on a long walk at this time, a yearlong solo walk, during which they are not allowed to speak to other humans, while walking through remote parts of the Pyrenees. The closest thing we have in mainstream Western culture is a "gap year" between high school and college -- a wandering time.

So, what happens during those years?
 
The nature-oriented task of late adolescence is exploring the mysteries of nature and psyche. And the culture-oriented task is leaving the home of the early-adolescent personality and separating our consciousness from everyday culture, even if it's a healthy culture. It's a time of withdrawal from everyday cultural life. And many of the people who come to us for coaching are people who have arrived at this place. And if we try to help them solve the problem too soon, we abort the adventure of the underworld journey.

As an underworld guide, my job, on behalf of people who come to me at such a time in their lives, is to help them make it worse: to help them die, psychologically, psycho-spiritually, to help them become dismembered, to be digested by the world, to become caterpillar soup. That's what happens in the Cocoon. As an underworld guide, my job is to help people become human soup. Or sometimes it's to create a holding environment in which they can go through that experience, which is much more than a weekend workshop. The descent to soul usually takes a year or more, as it always has for us humans.

In case I haven't said it yet, I believe the greatest potential of coaching at this time in the world is to help people go through the Cocoon experience so that they don't end up trying to figure out what there is to do in life, and we don't have to try to tell or leave hints. Instead, we can help them discover their true purpose in life.

Here's another David White poem, called "All The True Vows." It's my favorite poem about the experience of soul encounter, the experiential encounter with the mysteries of the soul, which is the goal of the Cocoon stage. Once we've glimpsed enough of our soul, we become eligible to make a promise it will kill us to break, a promise to embody that mystery in the world. As soon as we make that promise, Mystery kicks us into stage 5, which is all about learning how to embody that mystery in the world. Stage 5 is what I call the Soul Apprentice at the Wellspring. It follows the Cocoon.
 
All the true vows
are secret vows
the ones we speak out loud
are the ones we break.
 
There is only one life
you can call your own
and a thousand others
you can call by any name you want.
 
Hold to the truth you make
every day with your own body,
don't turn your face away.
 
Hold to your own truth
at the center of the image
you were born with.
 
Those who do not understand
their destiny will never understand
the friends they have made
nor the work they have chosen
 
nor the one life that waits
beyond all the others.
 
By the lake in the wood
in the shadows
you can
whisper that truth
to the quiet reflection
you see in the water.
 
Whatever you hear from
the water, remember,
 
it wants you to carry
the sound of its truth on your lips.
Remember,
in this place
no one can hear you
 
and out of the silence
you can make a promise
it will kill you to break,
 
that way you'll find
what is real and what is not.
 
I know what I am saying.
Time almost forsook me
and I looked again.
 
Seeing my reflection
I broke a promise
and spoke
for the first time
after all these years
 
in my own voice,
 
before it was too late
to turn my face again. [1]

There are two different kinds of promises in this poem. The second one mentioned is the one that we have to break in late adolescence. It's the promise that I won't sing in my own voice, I won't embody my true magnificence, because the powers-that-be will cut me down -- and they will, if I sing before I'm really ready. We all make this promise when we are approximately three years old. We don't remember having done it because it happens before our autobiographical memory has formed. We promised to stop being our magnificent selves because our parents, teachers, extended families didn't like it. So we make a promise something like this: "If you'll only keep me safe, I'll never again sing in my true voice." When you make this promise, it's with a part of the psyche I call the Loyal Soldier, whose job is to protect you from being psychologically slaughtered by your world.

At some point, when we're mature enough, we must break that promise. And then we can make another promise, which is the one that will kill us to break. Like this: "Once I've glimpsed the mystery I was born with, I will do everything I can to embody it in the world."

I'm going to end this talk by drumming for you for a little while -- the sort of trance drumming we use in our work to help shift consciousness. While I do this I want to invite you to remember your own experience of Confirmation, that moment in life when you began asking those really big questions. Did you get through the passage? Or did you get stuck? If you got through, did you go on to the experience of soul encounter? And if so, how would that or does that inform your coaching? Or would it? Or, if you haven't been through the passage of Confirmation, what are your feelings about this? And I want to encourage you to journal about it and talk to each other about it. [drumming]
 
 
Adapted from Bill's talk to the International Coaches Federation at their August 2008 Montreal conference.


To read part one through seven  click here.
 
  Resources
 
[1] David Whyte, "All the True Vows," in The House of Belonging (Langley, WA: Many Rivers Press, 1996), p. 24.

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Soulcraft Musings: 
Exploring Soul and the Human Encounter with Soul 
 
Soulcraft Musings are drawn from published and unpublished works by Bill Plotkin and other Animas guides and offer weekly trail markers (cairns) on the journey to soul. Each Musing builds on previous ones but also stands alone, and you can join at any time. You can read previous Musings here.

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